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08 January 2010
Activists Make the Federal Deficit a Personal Issue
Washington — It’s easy to understand grass-roots activists fighting against a hazardous waste dump in their town or pushing for lower property taxes. But becoming passionate about the federal budget deficit?
“It’s very difficult to get it to be a top-tier issue,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan, nonprofit group. “You’re never going to get a Million Man March on the deficit.”
MacGuineas is a member of the newly founded Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform, a group of former members of Congress and congressional, administration and other fiscal specialists. In December 2009, the commission released a report calling for spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the country’s dependence on debt.
Typically, grass-roots activism stems from personal experience — when someone has suffered hardship and wants to do something about the cause, according to Dana R. Fisher, an associate sociology professor at Columbia University. When it comes to the $12 trillion national debt, it’s difficult to even understand numbers that big, much less point to the effect on your own life, Fisher said.
But defying conventional wisdom, 8 percent of Americans named the national debt as the most important problem facing the country in a Gallup Poll in December 2009, up from 2 percent a year earlier and in line with 9 percent recorded in September 2009 — the highest level of concern over the deficit in a decade.
The national debt is the federal government’s total indebtedness. It is calculated by adding up the current and previous budget deficits and the outstanding interest. The U.S. government borrows money to finance its debt by selling bonds and other securities to domestic and foreign investors in the private and public sectors.
NEW ATTITUDE
What’s motivating fiscal activism? For Avery Chope, 73, it was reaching a stage of life with more free time and a desire to serve others. But the San Francisco financial adviser didn’t want to waste his years of experience in banking by serving meals to the homeless. So he contacted the Concord Coalition, an advocacy group focusing on reform of public pension and health care programs and fiscal responsibility.
“I told them ... given my background in finance, maybe I could contribute in some sense to the discussion,” said Chope, who spearheaded a Concord advisory council for Northern California and visited Washington for a national conference in December 2009.
Not everybody shares a sense of crisis about social program costs and their effect on the budget deficits, though. In a December 2009 letter to the Washington Post newspaper, a group of financial and economic analysts called Project to Defend and Expand Social Security protested the use of “fiscal distress as a stalking horse to destroy social insurance.”
The national debt amounts to about $40,000 for each person in the United States, and interest costs consume nearly 10 percent of the federal budget. In fiscal year 2009, which ended September 30, 2009, the federal budget deficit reached $1.4 trillion.
“We are burdening [the next generation] with something quite horrific,” Chope said.
Large budget deficits drive up interest rates, discouraging private-sector investment. This slows the economy and threatens the living standard of future generations.
People who become active on the issue tend to share a sense of responsibility and concern for the well-being of the country, said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition. They “are concerned that we’re letting down the future and that’s not consistent with our American dream,” Bixby said.
THE DEBT CLOCK IS TICKING
That’s what motivated the late Seymour Durst to erect a clock in Times Square in New York City. The clock, now located on 6th Avenue, tracks the increasing national debt, explained Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the Durst Organization, a real estate company that has maintained the clock since 1989.
A number of factors have combined to drive attention to debt, MacGuineas said. First was the deficit topping the symbolic $1 trillion last year. Then the Chinese government expressed concern about unsustainable U.S. spending. Finally, initial signs of the economic recovery make it possible to shift attention from recovery to the deficit. “2010 is going to be the swing year,” MacGuineas predicted.
For those in the trenches, it’s important to see incremental progress, said Amy Showalter, a grass-roots influence consultant based in Cincinnati.
There’s also a social aspect, Showalter said. Once people start recruiting other volunteers and going to rallies, it becomes a fun activity.
Kelvin Poon, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, never campaigned for anything before he launched Pound-It.org, a Web site aiming to raise awareness about the national debt.
Poon sprang into action when he learned that public health care and pension programs were projected to run into serious financial troubles before he even neared retirement. “It was kind of scary that no one was doing anything about it.”
Pound-It.org held two events with speakers and organized a screening of I.O.U.S.A., a documentary about the impact of the national debt that, like the Concord Coalition, was funded by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
“Working on this project really changed my worldview,” Poon said. “I’d never thought of going out to change things before this.”
More information about plans to tackle the U.S. national debt and budget deficit can be found on the Web sites of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform, Concord Coalition and Pound-It.org.
Katherine Lewis contributes articles on fiscal policy to the Fiscal Times, a new digital news service funded by Peter G. Peterson.
